Friday, April 23, 2010

Bluebirds

Last year Jason installed a Bluebird house in our backyard in hopes of attracting Bluebirds to our yard who happen to be excellent predators of grasshoppers. Our first year of the house only yielded a family of Carolina Wrens, which is still good because they are cute little birds but they certainly don't have the wow factor of a Bluebird. (Oh and remember this story?)

Honestly, I still have a hard time believing that Bluebirds exist in our area. They are SO pretty and brightly colored that they seem they would be better suited for a tropical climate. Yes we see Cardinals and Bluejays around, but a Bluebird? Very rarely. Jason, also in an attempt to attract helpful birds, put in a new bird feeder, suet feeder, and bird oasis. Since then we've attracted the usual less colorful birds, a few gold finches (beautiful!), and the random Bluebird.

So you can imagine my excitement last night upon seeing a male and female pair of Bluebirds going in and out of our little birdhouse. (The birdhouse has a fairly small opening thereby making it only for smaller birds. I guess the shape of it makes it favorable to Bluebirds too.) I ran in and got my camera and sat up in the kids' playground house to snap a few photos. But clearly I had scared them away because they wouldn't come back down from the high trees, but they were watching us very closely. (The kids running around and playing I'm sure didn't help either.) I did manage to get a good photo of the mama Bluebird but the piece d'resistance, papa Bluebird, eluded me. (Although he looks just like the photo I've posted above!!) Jason put his ear up to the house and couldn't hear anything so we're pretty sure they are either in the process of building a nest or they have laid eggs with no hatchlings yet. (We didn't want to open it to look.)

So I will definitely be keeping an eye on it the next few weeks and hoping to get a photo of the papa and hoping we'll have baby Bluebirds soon. Nature is just so amazing. I wonder why there are blue birds yet no humans have naturally blue hair?